Sunday, June 7, 2015

Shisas and Dragons, Oh My!

My senior thesis animation, My Pet Shisa, is really going to get underway for "production" soon. The "villain" finally has a design and once I settle on one for the human character, I can storyboard and then get going on the actual animation! It sounds like a long journey, but at the rate I storyboard I can probably get it done in a week or so... Then I'd like to have all the animation done by December, if all goes well! This is mostly going to be AfterEffects animation, like my Procrastination piece, but with some Flash (and Photoshop-painted-over) bits for when it needs to be more fluid!

Anyway, the reason for this post was first, to share the image at the top of the post because it's the first really fleshed out promotional piece I've done! The second is to share some of the design process. As I mentioned, my dragon "bad guy" recently had his design polished! So without further ado, some of the journey:

The dragon is an evil spirit that manifests from feelings of stress and being overworked, particularly from school work in my story. Its mane and other "adornments" are made up of the papers and its body is made to look like ink because it first emerges from a desk of books and paper. Only little Ryukyu, the baby Shisa, can stop it!

I'll certainly be posting more about this story's development and production as it comes! I'm greatly looking forward to working on this more and I hope that people will find it an enjoyable 'lil animation!